A couple of assholes

Today’ s L.A. Times: “Community activists plan to hold a protest today against KFI-AM (640) for what they contend is the local station's race-baiting in airing a popular afternoon talk radio show that has turned the execution of former gang leader Stanley Tookie Williams into entertainment. A multiracial coalition... hopes… it can pressure the Clear Channel-owned station into canceling "The John and Ken Show's" daily 5 p.m. observance of the "Tookie Must Die/Kill Tookie" hour. The producers of the show said Tuesday that the station had no plans to cancel the program…”

John and Ken are an afternoon drive radio team in L.A. They’re a couple of boobs who like to pick on poor people: Chardonnay racists, cappuccino bigots, cynical blue collar blockheads who cater to the misplaced anger of middle-class male commuters in Mercedes, while kissing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ass because he’s in power.

They spew it, but they don’t mean it. And that's part of the problem. If they meant it, if they were idealogues or even funny, they'd at least be compelling. These guys are radio squares, one of those sad teams who usually work with a bicycle horn and crash cymbal. In the old days, they’d each take a different side of an issue so not to offend any portion if the radio audience. But after right wing and hate radio came into vogue, they changed their tunes and climbed onboard.

Like Sean Hannity, they’re radio guys who were stranded in a lower rung of show business and found a schtik to get attention.

They stir up hatred against Mexican immigrants and black people.

In L.A.

For ratings.

Will Tookie Williams be executed? We’ll see what constituency Arnold’s handlers tell him to please. But “Tookie Must Die/Kill Tookie?” John and Ken would wet their relaxed-fit Dockers if they stepped into the visiting room of a prison.